The VR Era of Underground Mining

By Zhang Qian & Qiu Tianxing

When we think about mining, we imagine dangerous mines, large amounts of waste water, and unkempt miners.

In Zhangcunping Town, Yiling District of Yichang City, the location of the second largest phosphate mine—Tiaoshuihe Phosphate in Asia and the mainstream of Huangbai River which is the first-level tributary of the Yangtze River, you will see a mining site where clear creeks flow and beautiful flowers bloom in the mountains. Here, the operators control the whole process of mining via VR and no traces of a typical stope can be found.

VR-Controlled Mining

We drove along the winding road on the mountain for 3 hours and arrived at the mining area of Hubei Sanning Mining Company. What jumped into our sight were rolling ranges of hills, babbling crystal water, green grasses, and blossoming flowers. “Our production line is divided into two parts: the above-ground control system and the underground operation zone. First we drill holes on the rock wall with a rock drilling rig, then we load and blast the explosives. After all that, the ore is transported to the processing field via conveyor belt for AI screening. Rich ore is transported away while goafs and tailings are back-filled.” Li Yong, the deputy general manager of Sanning Mining Company, was very proud as he told us about the process. He specifically emphasized that drilling, blasting, ventilation, and backfilling are all operated by workers above the ground, who operate VR technology to control the machines that do the tough work underground.

地下采矿VR时代

文/张茜 邱天星

说起采矿，总让人联想到危险的矿井、大量的废水和蓬头垢面的矿工。

在亚洲第二大磷矿、长江一级支流黄柏河源头——宜昌市夷陵区樟村坪镇，一处采矿点却是这样的景象：山涧流水潺潺、鲜花盛开，调度人员用VR管控着采矿流程，完全感觉不出这里是正在采矿的矿山。

VR指挥采矿

我们沿着盘山公路驱车3小时，到达湖北三宁矿业公司矿区，映入眼帘的是层峦高山、潺潺流水和绿草鲜花。“生产线分地面指挥和井下操作两部分，首先通过凿岩台车在岩壁上打眼，装药爆破，矿石通过传送带送至选矿场智能筛选，富矿装车运走，废矿尾矿回填山体。”介绍流程的时候，三宁矿业副总经理李勇一脸自豪。他特意强调，钻孔、装药爆破、通风、装岩等都由调度人员在井上通过VR遥控指挥或通过操作井下机器完成。

VR, short for virtual reality, a technology that has become especially popular in recent years, works through VR software, which creates a three-dimensional space that simulates the real scene. The control personnel feel like they are on location and command the operation accordingly and accurately. When we entered the hall of the control center, the first thing we saw was a giant display screen, along with 32 small screens showing realtime scenes of the entire mining area. In the middle there was a three-dimensional panorama of the mining area, which clearly and holistically showed real-time data, ranging from equipment operations in each area and personnel activities to the movement of wind, water, and electricity. Li Yong said that this is the “brain” of the entire mining area.

An operator was operating two devices similar to a video game controller, while a yellow robotic arm was shown on the computer screen. “This is a mechanical breaker, now working in the underground roadway 6 kilometers away.” Li Yong said that it takes a lot of manpower and material resources to transport large ore onto the ground, and that this process also causes pollution. Underground work can solve all of these problems. Wang Xueliang, the general manager of Sanning Mining, told us that this platform integrates multiple functions, including production control, communication management, environment monitoring, and safety supervision.

VR，近年来大热的虚拟现实技术，通过软件虚拟现实，产生三维空间，让操控人员身临其境，精确指挥操作。走进调度指挥中心大厅，迎面是一面墙的巨型显示屏，32个小窗口展示着整个矿区的实时景象。中间是矿区三维全景图，各区域设备运行、人员活动、风水电等实时数据一目了然。李勇说，这里是整个矿区的“大脑”。

一名工作人员操纵着两个类似游戏手柄的设备，电脑屏幕里显示的是一个黄色机械臂。“这是机械破碎锤，正在6公里远的井下巷道作业。”李勇说，大块矿石运到地面破碎耗费人力物力，还容易造成污染，井下破碎这些问题都不存在了。三宁矿业总经理王学梁介绍，这一平台集生产控制、通信集成、安环监测与监控等功能于一体。

井下没几人

绿色智能的矿井里，是一番什么景象？

从海拔1300米的山上下到地下400米深的矿洞，工作人员既不靠双脚走，也不坐传统的猴车，而是乘汽车。

穿戴好工作服、长筒胶鞋、安全帽，门禁自动识别帽子上的电子信息牌后自动打开。登上停在斜坡道上的一辆汽车，我们开始了一趟奇幻的地下旅程。

Few Workers Underground

What does a green and intelligent mine look like?

Instead of walking or taking the traditional tramway, workers here travel by car, from the 1300-meterhigh mountain to the 400-meterdeep underground mine.

Having put on work uniforms, long rubber shoes, and hard hats, we saw the door open automatically after it identified the information cards on our hats. We got on a car parked on the ramp and started a fantastic underground journey.

The mine road was more spacious than expected, with a car park every 50 meters. An electronic rolling shutter door along our way sensed our car coming and automatically opened up. “The electronic door has sensors and acts automatically. Meanwhile it also collects real time data and uploads it to the VR platform,” Li Yong told us, having joined us on our trip down to the mine.

Rock drilling rig excavating 先进的凿岩台车实施采掘作业

There are no wind drillers, reinforcement workers, or scaling workers in the main operating area underground. Hydraulic rigs are used for drilling, followed by bolting jumbos for reinforcement, then machines for removing any unstable slabs of rock. According to Bian Fenglei, the captain of the machine mining team, the drilling rig can drill a hole as deep as 3.5 meters in one minute, which means one drilling rig can do 60 drill workers’ jobs.

In the secondary crushing area, the two yellow mechanical breakers we saw on the screen in the above-ground control center were working on their own in the empty mine. Going forward to the second back-filling station, we saw nobody there either, just a large set of equipment connected to long pipes, extending into another tunnel.

We walked to the back-filling area and saw one tunnel after another, each measuring 6 meters with their walls cast by cement. “This is the ‘exclusive technique’ of Sanning Mining. We construct a heavy-media seperation plant and tailing-cementing backfill station at the entrance of the excavation, where goafs and tailings are mixed into cement and transported back to the underground well, back-filling the stope in the areas where mining is finished,” Li Yong said. “In this way, we solved the problem of tailings stacking and also protected the mountain effectively.”

Remote-controlled large-diameter ore crushing 远程遥控大块径矿石破碎

矿道比预想的宽敞，每隔50米还建有会车处。沿途有一扇扇卷帘电子风门，感应到车辆后会自动升起，“电子风门靠传感器自动感应，并实时采集数据上传到VR平台。”一起下矿井的李勇介绍。

井下主要采矿作业面已没有风钻工、支护工、撬毛工，全液压的凿岩台车打炮眼，锚杆台车跟进支护、撬毛机撬掉松动的毛石。机采队长卞锋雷说，凿岩台车一分钟就能打成一个深度为3.5米的炮眼，一辆凿岩台车顶得上60个风钻工。

来到二级破碎处，在地面指挥中心屏幕里看到的黄色机械破碎锤映入眼帘，空无一人的矿道里，两个机械破碎锤“默默地”工作着。继续往前，来到充填二级泵站，同样没有人，一组大型设备连接着长长的管道，向旁边一个矿道里延伸。

步行到充填区，一个一个的“隧道”，间距6米，洞壁为水泥浇铸。“这就是三宁矿业的‘绝活’，在坑口配套建设重介质选矿厂和尾矿胶结充填站，废矿尾矿搅拌成水泥，被输送回井下，填充完成开采的山体。”李勇说，这样既彻底解决了尾矿堆放难题，也有效保护了山体。

我们在井下只见到4名工作人员，一人操作凿岩台车、两人安全巡视，一人开运输车。李勇说，以前，如此规模的矿山至少要1000人才能运转，现在只有200多人，还包括管理、后勤人员，真正下矿井的工作人员非常少，“无人采矿”正在变成现实。

环保开采

“晴天一片灰，雨天一路泥，远观像大雾，近看满身土”是传统矿区的真实写照，越来越多的年轻人远离这个行业。王学梁介绍，在采矿方法上三宁矿业一改传统开采的老路，近几年投入巨资新建井下一流节能、环保机电系统、井下矿石破碎装车系统、井下PLC胶带运输系统、智能通风系统、井下无线通信。集机械化、自动化、信息化、数字化为一体，三宁矿业的诞生具有非同一般的开创性意义，是全国的标杆。

高新技术开采也吸引了高素质人才。三宁矿业的操作队伍以80后、90后为主，下井作业的技术员学历最高是研究生，大部分是大学生，也不再是传统意义上的矿工了。

当今的中国，资源绿色开采、下游产品深加工、废弃资源绿色处理和综合利用已经成为磷化工行业发展的趋势，传统磷矿企业正向这一目标转型。

VR Control Center—Mine Area Dispatch and Command Center VR管控中枢——矿区调度指挥中心

We only saw four workers underground, one operating the rock drilling rig, two doing safety patroling, and the fourth driving the transporting vehicle. Li Yong said that in the past, a mine of this size had to be operated by at least 1,000 people, while nowadays, including management and logistics personnel, there are only 200 people or so. Very few workers need to actually go underground, and “unmanned mining” is becoming a reality.

Environment-Friendly Mining

As an old saying goes, the traditional stope looks “dusty in a sunny day, muddy in a rainy day, foggy seen from afar, and soil you all over when you look closer.” More and more young people are staying away from the industry. Wang Xueliang said, Sanning Mining has discarded the old traditional way of mining. In recent years, they have invested a lot in building a new underground, energysaving, environment-friendly electro-mechanical system, underground ore crushing and loading system, underground PLC tape transportation system, intelligent ventilation system, and underground wireless communication. The birth of Sanning Mining has an extraordinary pioneering significance and has become the national role model, since it integrates mechanization, automation, intelligent technology and digitization.

High-tech mining has also attracted high-quality talents. The operation team of Sanning Mining is mainly composed of young people born in the 1980s and 1990s. Some of these technicians working underground receive post-graduation education, and most of them are college graduates. They are no longer the stereotypical miners of the past.

In today’s China, green mining of resources, deep processing of downstream products, green treatment of waste resources and comprehensive utilization have become the main trends of the phosphorus chemical industry, towards which the traditional phosphate enterprises are transforming themselves. (Translation: Lu Qiongyao)